If you want to know exactly why Florida Polytechnic University leaders intend to ask for another $25 million to get the new school up and running, pull up a chair and get comfortable.

By MARY TOOTHMANTHE LEDGER

LAKELAND | If you want to know exactly why Florida Polytechnic University leaders intend to ask for another $25 million to get the new school up and running, pull up a chair and get comfortable.Although interest is high in the financial aspects of the new university, there is no short answer.The volunteer board of trustees for the 12th state university voted at a recent retreat to ask Ava Parker, FPU's interim COO, to evaluate the need and make the request for additional money. Parker says she will go through the State University System Board of Governors with the request, which will come too late to follow the usual deadline channels for funding requests.FPU board member Sandra Featherman said at the Feb. 5 meeting she didn't think it should be a problem to ask lawmakers for money to finish the construction on the campus at Interstate 4 and the Polk Parkway."They've made an enormous investment in us. They need to let us complete that investment," she said. "We need to be able to finish this building properly, and it's in their best interest."Board Chairman Rob Gidel says that although there is enough money for construction, more funds are needed to properly open the doors to the university."We don't want to open the science center with the rest of the campus looking incomplete," he said. "We are having to build out a 100-acre campus — infrastructure, water management, roads, parking lots, landscaping, etcetera. They gave us enough dedicated money to build one building inside the campus."We don't have enough construction money to build out the campus. So do we use the E&G (educational and general operating revenues) money that could be used to build the academic mission to finish the rest of the campus? Or use it for academics and leave the campus for later? And it will look very desolate. "No one focused on the total cost to build out the campus, no one."The polytechnic was created by legislation backed by former Sen. J.D. Alexander, a Lake Wales Republican whose tactics were hard-hitting. To create the new university, the Lakeland-based University of South Florida Polytechnic was dissolved. FPU now has its budget and the USF Lakeland campus is phasing out.Alexander and other supporters sold the idea in part by insisting that the money was already in place to fund the school. If more funds are needed, the bill specifies, special permission has been granted to allow operational funds to be used for the project. If the university needs more money for construction, it can use operational funds that normally are reserved for academic programs. FPU received special permission to do that under the bill that created the university.Gidel says it's true that the funds are there for. "We've got enough money. We don't have any problem finishing that building. That building's going to get built," he said in a recent interview.The rub is that a new university seeking to draw bright students and faculty needs more than a building, he said. "The building is only one little part of all of that. So what we're charged with doing is not just building this building, but finishing all of that, grading all that dirt, putting in underground utilities etc."It's more than just the building."The new board is struggling to plan the university in a timely and cost-effective way with no specific academic plan in place, no students and no faculty. Making projections is a challenge.There are many factors at stake, including what will happen when students are on the scene. "If I bring Sally and her mom and dad to the campus to try to talk them into coming to my school, and this looks desolate and unsafe ... you've got to fix this," Gidel said. "So, we went further and said OK, if you are ultimately going to build housing, you have to build more parking and underground utilities."Former Sen. Paula Dockery, who fought to put the brakes on Alexander's drive to start the new college, is not surprised that money has run short. She and former Sen. Mike Fasano, now in the House, fought tooth and nail to stop the push to create the new university so quickly. "These were the very issues that responsible legislators like Mike Fasano and myself were trying to bring up," said Dockery, a Republican from Lakeland. "You don't have a plan, you don't have good numbers on paper — you are forcing an issue whose time has not come yet."Gidel and his board and staff, however, are working in the present — not the past. He won't even look at former budgets or numbers calculated by the previous planners of the new school. "From my perspective, I just got here," Gidel says. "What happened in the past and what's been built up to this point, and what's been spent up to this point, is really not as interesting to me. Talk to me about cost to complete."The new building, designed by famed architect Santiago Calatrava, has $109 million earmarked for its completion. Calatrava's fee of about $13 million has been paid.Gidel projects a "shortfall to construct initial campus" of $25 million."The 109 (million dollars) doesn't mean anything to me because I have no idea how they got this. All I care about is cost to complete," Gidel said.As plans for the new university are made, he said, the board and staff will work to price those out and make sure all is completed in the best interest of the state. "We are getting there. Lots of work to be done, and we will need help from the Legislature, BOG and governor, as well as the local governments, to make this work. "We will do this correctly."The BOG, meanwhile, has expressed high interest in the school's need for more money. The chairman of BOG wrote to Gidel last week and asked him to attend its next meeting, to be held at FAMU on March 27 and 28."Given the news reports of Florida Polytechnic's intent to request $25 million from the Legislature, I would also ask that the presentation include specific information on any perceived funding shortfalls not covered in Florida Polytechnic's initial budget or by way of exemptions granted in SB 1994," chair Dean Colson said.He was referring to Senate Bill 1994, which authorized the creation of Florida Poly. That bill, FPU's interim COO Parker points out, also calls for residential facilities for the students. "Keep in mind, we were created pursuant to a statute, and the statute states that we will have residence halls," she said.That will take money, Gidel says. "We have no place for the students to eat or sleep There's nothing in this plan to do that," he said. "No one contemplated this — this was never contemplated in the amount of money that was given to us, or appropriated to us."Dockery said the new university's leaders inherited these issues. "They are not the bad guys," she said. "All of these things should have been addressed before," she said. "You can make all of the excuses you want, but they pushed this thing forward without thinking it through. These are the very issues that were never properly planned or thought out, and now the responsible people are having to deal with all of it."Rep. Seth McKeel, a Lakeland Republican, said the funding request will be reviewed, but competes with many other needs. "There is a long line of requests for state funding," he said. "During our budget development process this year, we will review and evaluate those requests in a deliberate manner and make prudent decisions in the best interest of Floridians."

[ Mary Toothman can be reached at mary.toothman@theledger.com or 863-802-7512. Her Twitter feed is @MaryToothman.]